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Share of primary school teachers who are female

What you should know about this indicator

Number of female teachers at the primary level expressed as a percentage of the total number of teachers (male and female) at the primary level in a given school year. Teachers are persons employed full time or part time in an official capacity to guide and direct the learning experience of pupils and students, irrespective of their qualifications or the delivery mechanism, i.e. face-to-face and/or at a distance. This definition excludes educational personnel who have no active teaching duties (e.g. headmasters, headmistresses or principals who do not teach) and persons who work occasionally or in a voluntary capacity in educational institutions.

Source
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 16, 2024
Next expected update
June 2025
Date range
1970–2023
Unit
%

Explore charts that include this data

Share of teachers who are female in primary vs. tertiary education

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official and trusted source of internationally-comparable data on education, science, culture and communication. As the official statistical agency of UNESCO, the UIS produces a wide range of state-of-the-art databases to fuel the policies and investments needed to transform lives and propel the world towards its development goals. The UIS provides free access to data for all UNESCO countries and regional groupings from 1970 to the most recent year available.

Retrieved on
June 16, 2024
Retrieved from
https://uis.unesco.org/bdds
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Education, https://uis.unesco.org/bdds, 2024

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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of primary school teachers who are female”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-school-teachers-who-are-female [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of primary school teachers who are female” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved November 23, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-school-teachers-who-are-female